"On April 27, 2010, U.S. Sens. Al Franken, Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, and Mark Begich wrote a letter to Facebook, urging the social networking company to change their privacy settings modifications from opt-out to opt-in. In a statement accompanying the letter, Sen. Schumer said:

Millions of New Yorkers use social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter every day with an expectation that their private information is shared only with those they choose to connect with . . . . [I]t’s vitally important that safeguards are in place that provide users with control over their personal information to ensure they don’t receive unwanted solicitations and other nuisances, and that they are not automatically gathered into online groups without their consent."

Science Daily had some of the reports below running last year, discussing issues related with Privacy, How Facebook and other Social Networking sites pose concerns for a user, where the user signs away his rights to the online entity.

You can read about the Science Daily report discussing this particular issue.

Another Science daily report discussing a research at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, how practices of many social networking websites make available a User's browsing information with the tracking websites.

Recently there were many privacy issues reported in the media, when it was noted that Engineers at the web giant Google were detected to have copied or collected a huge volume of private data illegally, while surveying the streets in European cites, for the Google's Street View application.

Google has been since in damage control mode and made clear that it has already purged or are on the way to purge complete data collected illegally, and then recently Google tightened up it's employee privacy policy when dealing with Customer data. Read related Yahoo report here.

There's no reason to doubt the steps taken by Google in this direction, but the concern will remain high with How much user data changed hands or the content duplicated. Though these issues are still unfolding, and it will take time till the user's swarming the Social sphere can comprehend about what exactly is been done with their virtual identity, that's increasingly revealing more and more information about a User. And a fact that it no longer gives a User an identity, which used to seem so anonymous online a couple of years ago.

How do you think that your Privacy might be affected online ?
Do you think it is OK for tracking websites to scan your data from Social Networking sites with which a User actually signs a Privacy and Terms contract ?
When did you felt that your Online Privacy has been violated ?
Are you satisfied with Privacy Policy of all the online majors in the Social Networking realm ?